Friday, April 3, 2009

Triumph [re-crafting old, tired legislation]

...(emphasis on "tired")...


After a long and arduous battle over the past 10 years, the Bigger, Better Bottle Bill was passed in the NYS Legislature. Yep, just last Friday. The Assembly passes it every year. But THIS year, the Senate passed it too. Which means that THEY are the REAL heroes.

Obviously, that's absurd. The real heroes are my colleagues who have fought tooth and nail the past 10 years for NY to put a nickel deposit on bottles that are EXACTLY the same as those already requiring a deposit. For instance, can you tell me what the difference is between a Aquafina water bottle and a Pepsi cola bottle ? (Coke went up and changed its bottle so that it was different from Dasani... you can't fool me, Coca-Cola.)

Seriously, this amendment to the bottle deposit law was so contested... bottling industries spent millions of dollars on lobbyists and paid millions in campaign contributions to block it. My faith in NY government has been restored.

Moral of the story, water and "enhanced water" (figure that one out) are going to be on sale across the state until June 1st, 2009. Don't forget to recycle.

2 comments:

Sparticus said...

Thank goodness for Speaker Silver and Assemblymember Sweeney's leadership on environmental issues.

Christine said...

Woop woop!